Facebook Grabs Deal For PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Streams

Facebook recently grabbed the rights to the new weekly livestream series PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The open-world battle royale MMO involves 100 players competing against each other, and to win, a player is required to get the best of its 100 competitors in the battlefield.

Image Source: Facebook (screenshot)

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is already immensely popular

According to developer Bluehole Studios, the live-streams will show off various elements of gameplay.

“This new initiative with Facebook will bring our passionate fan base closer to our development team,” the developer said, adding that the team plans to work with community members on the videos as well.

The game is based on the “survival of the fittest” theme, in which players are equipped with mini weapons, which they use to kill all their opponents. The game title is still under development and is likely to be completed towards the end of this year. Despite this, more than 4 million copies of the game have been sold as an early access title.

Recently, the popular game was a bestseller on Steam at a time when massive discounts were offered on most games on the platform, even though it was not one of the discounted titles, notes CNET.

Facebook can boost the live audience

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was developed by the studio with live audiences at the center. Bluehole global business developer Woonghee Cho told GamesBeat that viewers form one of the most important consumer groups for the company. This has helped the game get massively popular on Twitch, where thousands of people watch it every day. To get more viewers, the developers even offered players special cosmetic items if they connect their Twitch accounts to Battlegrounds, notes VentureBeat.

Even though Twitch has a more engaged audience of dedicated gamers, Facebook offers a potentially broader audience. Like Twitch, Facebook could provide massive viewership to the title, considering its focus on getting more and more live content as developers and publishers are always looking for ways to reach out their fans.

Facebook’s rising interest in gaming content

Facebook’s streams of the game started Monday. The first stream was hosted by one of Bluehole’s community managers, although for the subsequent streams, hosts will vary among content creators from the PUBG community and Bluehole’s community managers. The broadcast begins at 7 p.m. Pacific on Facebook. For more information on the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds livestream, visit the PUBG Facebook page.

Leo Olebe, Facebook’s director of global games partnerships, told Polygon, “Just as Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds came out we just started playing it in the office. You might spend 20 minutes hiding behind a rock just to get shot in the head. But it’s just such a blast. … Just like everybody else, we fell in love with it. … We reached out [to the developer, Bluehole] and said, ‘Hey is there something cool that we can do together?’”

Facebook’s content deal for the popular game hints at its plan to get more live video and gaming content on its platform. Recently, a one-button Facebook video streaming functionality was added to Blizzard games, notes CNET.